Cocteau (1889-1963) is remembered as a multidisciplinary artist who was a filmmaker, playwright, poet, and fine artist. While his movement along artistic forms spurred negative criticism in his time, it is a quality that is much appreciated today and one of the characteristics that the Warhol Museum compares favorably with its namesake.
But more interesting than Cocteau’s multiple means of expression is the way he moved back and forth, between abstract and representational, objective and subjective, rational and expressive, right brain and left; the way he analyzed such shifts; and ultimately the subversiveness of cloaking one method of communicating within another, in that images and words are usually constructed and received in vastly different ways.
This comes out in the exhibition through the rhythmic juxtapositions of his artworks and archival material relating to his far-reaching activities, and it is also verified in his own words. “Drawing is great fun,” he says in his autobiography. “Writing is a form of drawing produced by a different process. And drawing is a form of writing used for a different purpose. When I draw, I am writing; and perhaps when I write I also draw.”
Understanding this complex arrangement -- a poetic dance that courts the intellect and the muse -- opens new appreciations of works in the exhibition, such as a haunting self-portrait of 1954, that is half photograph and half pencil drawing. It also adds credibility to other theories, such as scholar Frederic Canovas’s comment that Cocteau’s “repetitive and almost obsessional” drawings of young, masculine and aroused males, which he contined to make until his death, were attempts to redefine his own self-image. If the hand was such a strong extension of the mind -- as happens, for example, in the discipline of calligraphy -- then it is conceivable that Cocteau had devised a feedback loop that could have produced change. Or, maybe he just liked what he drew.
This large exhibition of around 300 items, most of them from the collection of the Cocteau Museum in France purports to examine Cocteau “in depth.” Most of the artworks by Cocteau are, appropriately, drawings which show the influence of Picasso who was a friend. People who know Andy Warhol’s drawings, especially those in a recent exhibition at the museum, will note the similarity of Cocteau’s lines and Warhol’s.
While the museum says Cocteau had a “great influence on Warhol,” the two never met. The curator, Margery King, says they had in common their work in a variety of disciplines, and an integration of personal and professional lives that included open acknowledgment of their homosexuality. The sections of drawings done while fighting an opium habit, which resemble works by Outsider artists, of introspective self-portraits and of sensual erotic art are epsecially compelling. There are also portraits of Cocteau by major artworld figures, such as Modigliani and Diego Rivera, the latter especially fine.
A vast selection of historic photographs, letters, posters, books and other archival materials give presence to the performance aspects of Cocteau’s output, and flesh out the world that nurtured his talents. Depending on how much time the viewer wishes to invest, she can walk away marveling at the creative accomplishments of one lifetime, or stay and delve into the Paris of legendary figures such as Sarah Bernhardt, Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker, Erik Satie, and Jean Genet.
The Warhol Museum provides books in a Cocteau Reading and Listening Room that encourages further invesstigation. There is also space for writing and for listening to tapes that include Cocteau reading his poems (in French). In addition, the museum has breathed life into a silent collection of artifacts by showing a number of Cocteau’s films and cooperating with Quantum Theatre and the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Project in the production of Cocteau’s works. In addition, unique pieces spread throughout the galleries -- Cocteau’s Schiaparelli evening gown -- are unlikely to be seen elsewhere.
An illustrated catalogue has been prepared, and it is hoped that it will arrive from the printer before the exhibition closes. The exhibition runs through January 28, 2001 at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Free events to complement the show in January 2001 include a staged reading of Cocteau contemporary Jean Genet’s “The maids” by the Quantum Theatre and a lecture on Cocteau by scholar Kenneth Silver (Jan. 19).
The exhibition was also graced with a performance of Cocteau’s “La voix humaine” (“The human voice”) of 1930 and Poulenc’s opera adaptation of it. Both were performed in the museum’s lobby on November 14, 2000. The play, centering on a woman’s distressful series of telephone calls with an ex-lover after a breakup and brilliantly performed by Karla Boos, was definitely the emotional centerpiece of the whole Cocteau experience. The operatic version, sung by soprano Anrea Hanson and juxtaposed with the play, polarized the essential plot in an effective manner. A depth of Cocteau’s work that is not usually fathomed was the intellectually and emotionally tantalizing result.
Boos created a somber, frail and nervous character, crying the entire time, while Hanson’s operatic performance cultivated a strong, defiant and sensuous woman who laughed throughout. Yes, opera instantly brings a heightened glamour, but this hardly explains the vast difference in feel of the two dramas. The woman was portrayed legitimately as really two different characters and each worked. It was illuminating to behold.
Ray Anne Lockard
Frick Fine Arts Library
University of Pittsburgh
The symposium in Washington, “‘No color, only nuance’: Romaine Brooks, her circle, and her legacy” (September 23, 2000) was sponsored by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, with support from several area universities including UMD, American U, George Mason U, George Washington U, and Georgetown U. Speakers included Joe Lucchesi (co-organizer of the show), “Of artists, aristocrats, and Amazons: new approaches to Romaine Brooks’ work”; Laura Doan, “‘It’s hard to tell them apart today’: the fashionable and the Sapphic”; Bridget Elliot, “Decadent pasts and post modern futures: the temporal perversities of Romaine Brooks”; Flavia Rando, “The legacy of Romaine Brooks: generation/s of lesbian artists.”
In the San Francisco Bay Area, “The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars” (October 27, 2000, U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and October 28, 2000, Stanford University) was advertised as “a two-day interdisciplinary symposium that will explore issues of gender and sexuality among women active within the literary and artistic communities of interwar Paris.”
The U.C. Berkeley Art Museum program included a keynote address by Shari Benstock titled “Becoming modern: artistic Paris in the twenties” followed by a session titled “Left Bank/Right Bank: Romaine Brooks and the bisexual imagination,” with presentations by Whitney Chadwick, Paula Birnbaum, and Isabelle de Courtivron.
The Stanford University program included “Entertaining identities: Paris in the Jazz Age,” with presentations by Joe Lucchesi, Amy Lyford, and Tyler Stovall. “Legible/illegible: the lesbian look,” featured talks by Tirza True Latimer, Susan E. Dunn, Jennifer Shaw, and Bridget Elliott. Terry Castle was ill and unable to moderate as announced.
Caucus members attending the West Coast Program included Lenore Chinn, Jonathan Katz, Ann Meredith, Flavia Rando, Happy Hyder, Kim Anno, and me, Tee Corinne. Although I enjoyed Brooks receiving so much exposure, and especially enjoyed Joe Lucchesi’s presentation and appreciate the attention he has brought to Brooks’s photographs, I was repeatedly reminded, especially in the question and answer periods, that when you have seemingly heterosexual researchers doing queer history, their internal default is still heterosexual. When asked a question about women in the period under discussion, they answered with what was true for heterosexual women. Additionally, some individuals were moved toward the heterosexual end of the spectrum. Colette was only discussed in relationship to her male lovers and husbands. Her woman lover was NEVER mentioned.
Later, Lenore Chinn e-mailed the following comment: “Thankfully, the Stanford Brooks symposium included PhD candidate in art history, Tirza Latimer, to give her presentation from a lesbian cultural and historical perspective. Some of us found the rest of little relevance or interest and wondered how we had suffered and survived art history courses in the past.”
Also at the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and coinciding in time with most of the Romaine Brooks exhibit was “Continuous replay: the photographs of Arnie Zane” (see “About books”) which added another layer of queer visual culture to my museum-going experience. There is an exquisite vulnerability (his own and others) in these nude and semi-nude portraits and self-portraits.
For me, the powerful work in “Universal diversity 8 (ate)” by Art Group for Lesbian + Gay Artists at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center was an eight-panel piece in blue by Jim Pavlicovic, with photos, wall drawings, paintings, etc. The erotic power of a “plain” blue rectangle in a particular context.
Copies of Lesbian art in America by Harmony Hammond were all sold out the morning after her reading at Bluestockings, a collectively-run women’s bookstore at 172 Allen Street, New York, with new stock expected. A couple weeks later, only one of the restocked copies was still in the store and it was no longer available after I left.
On the way to see the exhibition on Ethel Mars and Maud Hunt Squire at Mary Ryan Gallery, I was reading the biography of Pierpont Morgan by Jean Strouse. Morgan’s daughter Ann went to a play with characters Ethel and Maud. While the timing is not particularly conducive to thinking it a direct reference to these artists who shared their lives, it was an odd coincidence. Of course, today’s pair would more likely be named Brittany and Tiffany. From Mary Ryan Gallery, I went to the Marlborough Gallery to see the R.B. Kitaj exhibition which included a wonderful portrait of a nude Quentin Crisp, looking like he just removed his corset, but the makeup was all in place. Nonetheless, Mars/Squire and Kitaj/Crisp both evoked the Pont Aven school with pastel colors and a Bonnard/Vuillardesque quiet.
Red dots appeared near most of the labels at the George Tooker exhibition at DC Moore Gallery when I visited on November 11th. The notable exceptions were those with the highest homoerotic content -- including “Window XI” (2000) which is the illustration on the gallery card. The other -- “Dark angel” -- featured a black man standing behind the artist. We are not told if he was an inspiration or a distraction.
The David Hockney prints show at Susan Sheehan Gallery did not have particularly high queer content unless you count a couple empty pools that remind you of seeing the boys swimming or splashing (the nude that wasn’t there).
While on jury duty in downtown Manhattan in early December, I stopped at Apex Art (291 Church St.) over the lunch break for a show entitled “Something happened” which included a video by Gregg Bordowitz on AIDS. He speculates on the fantasy of infecting someone for revenge. Incredibly powerful, especially when thinking about the criminal “justice” system.
The “Utopia” show at New York Public Library includes a work entitled “Icarian flag” from ca. 1848. It comes from a work associated with the group that took over the collective settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois after the Mormons moved on to Utah. The flag is rainbow-colored and includes the word “Fraternité.” We thought we were so thoroughly modern!?
The current show at the Lobby Gallery in the Deutsche Bank Building (31 West 52nd St., New York) is “Teamwork: artist pairs, art as teamwork” and it does not include any works with high homoerotic content. The gallery brochure however does include some discussion of same-sex pairs.
... proceed to project updates ...